[ecrea] Feminist Media Studies Special Issue on Gendered Ageing Bodies in Popular Media Culture: Call for Papers

Feminist Media Studies Special Issue on Gendered Ageing Bodies in 
Popular Media Culture: Call for Papers
Deadline: 15 May 2016
Edited by Iolanda Tortajada, Frederik Dhaenens, Cilia Willem

http://explore.tandfonline.com/cfp/ah/rfms-gendered-ageing-bodies-popular-media-culture/?post_id=10207780320178106_10207780325338235#_=_

This special issue of Feminist Media Studies will explore the 
interconnections between gender, ageing bodies and popular (media) 
culture in global societies. How is ageing addressed by cultural 
expres-sions world-wide in terms of gender displays and heteronormative 
frames? What kind of consumer-ist imperatives are circulated across the 
globe, and what are the particularities that distinguish communities and 
cultures?

Although in some contexts age is more positively viewed, and for example 
elderly women are revered, the dominant imperative is to ‘stay young’ as 
long as possible. When looking young becomes a model of success, both 
age denial and the shame of ageing emerge as widespread responses.

An inevitable attitude of resistance to ageing ends up pervading the way 
age is generally conceived of. Therefore, however paradoxically, the 
ageing process is turned on its head and becomes an anti-ageing 
consumerist enterprise that is but an attempt to slow down or even 
reverse ageing. Embodiments of the ‘successful’ ageing model show up in 
many western media representations of ageing (see, among others, Soden, 
2012; Ylänne, 2012; Dolan, 2014; Whelehan and Gwynne, 2014). Mature 
bodies are only interesting to media and popular culture insofar as they 
can potentially be used as visible proof of a deferred ageing process; 
otherwise, they remain hidden from the public eye, as they are 
considered to be abject bodies that do not fit the aforementioned model 
of successful ageing.

It is the global circulation of the neoliberal consumerist ethos that 
ultimately drives the representa-tion and performance of ageing. An 
important question, then, is what role gender plays in the interaction 
between cultural contexts, age and mediated cultures. Age and gender 
structure each other in a complex back-and-forth feedback exchange: the 
body becomes a site of struggle, a battlefield of sorts, where ageism 
and heteronormativity shape ageing experiences (Halberstam, 2005; 
Slevin, 2006). The female body is the one enduring the most opprobrium 
in that regard: "[t]he youthful structure of the look […] exhorts women 
to pass for younger once they are a certain age" (Woodward, 2006, p. 162).

However, it is not just about media representation: media create the 
philosophic and social parameters of ageing itself. A key question is 
how this subject helps us understand and theorize media in a consumerist 
neoliberal and global environment.

Ageing and ageism are important issues for feminism; however, feminist 
theorists have only recently begun to take them up. This special issue, 
Gendered ageing bodies in popular media culture, should provide us with 
an excellent opportunity to go into all these topics in greater depth.

Possible topics in relation to this theme may include (but are not 
limited to):

_Female and male ageing bodies in global popular media culture 
(magazines, pop music, TV, film, blogs…)

_Divas’ and stars’ ageing bodies

_Ageing in factual media (journalism, news and documentary production)

_Technologies of ageing

_Mediated ideologies of life span

_Sexuality, Reproduction and Ageing

_Overcoming ageist representational strategies

_Aesthetics of the ageing body

_Reception of discourses regarding ageing

Aims & Scope
Feminist Media Studies provides a transdisciplinary, transnational forum 
for researchers pursuing feminist approaches to the field of media and 
communication studies, with attention to the historical, philosophical, 
cultural, social, political, and economic dimensions and analysis of 
sites including print and electronic media, film and the arts, and new 
media technologies. The journal invites contributions from feminist 
researchers working across a range of disciplines and conceptual 
perspectives.

Peer Review Policy
All research articles in this journal undergo rigorous peer review, 
based on initial editor screening and anonymous refereeing by at least 
two scholars.

Submission Instructions
Please submit a 350-word abstract as well as a short (1-page) CV to 
Iolanda Tortajada
((iolanda.tortajada /at/ urv.cat)) by 15 May 2016. Authors whose abstracts are 
selected will be notified by 1 August, 2016 and asked to submit complete 
manuscripts by 15 January, 2017. Acceptance of the abstract does not 
guarantee publication of the paper, which will be subject to peer review.




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